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NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Timing is either everything or nothing apparently. Maybe it depends on when you consider the notion.

On Monday the market got back to its winning ways, reclaiming most of Friday’s losses and putting the bears on the run once more.

The impetus for the buying was fairly opaque, some combination of hand-clapping because Greece managed to fall in line with another round of austerity promises to get the money it needs to stave off default again from Europe’s leaders. Other factors were mildly favorable reviews of President Obama’s budget plan, and infectious enthusiasm about Apple(AAPL_) cresting above $500 to reach a new all-time high.

Nothing all that concrete for the broad market but the bulls were back nonetheless, maybe drawing some courage from the Barron’scover story over the weekend that trumpeted a high probability of the Dow Jones Industrial Average topping 15,000 in two years.

The odds of the blue-chip index reaching 17,000 in that span are 50-50, Barron’s also stated, citing “cyclical patterns of market history” that it takes a full five paragraphs to reveal are the product of a single source, Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel, who unsurprisingly has a book to sell.

The sentiment is fine for what it is, and data is integral to market analysis, the more of it the better usually being a good rule of thumb. But there’s something downright frothy about getting this carried away so soon. The article glosses over the current state of the U.S. economy and Europe’s debt problems, basically saying fears have subsided on both fronts so away we go.

The argument can be summed up as the last five years have been so bad on a cumulative basis, the next two years have to be really good to keep up with various patterns stretching across 141 years of equity performance. Anytime 1871 is used as a reference point for where stocks are headed in 2012, there’s some serious market timing at work.

But as anyone investing in stocks knows it’s all about when you get in and when you get out. There’s no doubting the patterns — that’s the past and it’s smart to take into account — still fundamentals matter too, especially when the U.S. is still coming out of a generational financial debacle.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Articles.
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